Siamese twins Lina and Diana die in mysterious circumstances. In this tragic story, their absent father Rostom learns of their existence first through the terrible fact of their death, then, page by page, from their poignant diary entries. Although they are conjoined, the girls are two very different individuals with well-defined and separate personalities. Easy-going, happy Lina is capable of falling in love, an optimistic and romantic soul who writes poetry in her diary and finds joy in the smallest details of her life. Diana, tougher and more down-to-earth, is less accepting of their situation, and angrier. Like most siblings they argue and envy each other; unlike most they cannot act in isolation except through this one outlet, their diaries. The two contrasting voices chronicle their extraordinary experience as two separate individuals who from the waist down share one body. Until they are teenagers, the vulnerable twins are hidden from the outside world and cared for by their grandmother, who struggles to protect them in impoverished post-Soviet Georgia, a society with little compassion for the disabled. After her death they are defenceless and fall victim to every type of ill-treatment. They are abused sexually and psychologically, and forced to work as freaks in a circus.